PPR Kawasaki Crunches AMA Numbers

Peak Performance Racing

The Peak Performance Racing Kawasaki team has spent some time contemplating the numbers in the AMA Pro Racing Supersport series.

Looking back at Miller Motorsports Park AMA Pro Road Racing round, we can see that Paddy McCordwas rounding the circuit in the rain with a best lap time of 2:11.533. Not the worst in the Daytona Sportbike race, but clearly not where he wanted to be; and I’m fairly certain nobody wanted to be racing in the Utah rain on Memorial Day weekend, but that’s another story.

Paddy’s DNF in that race came after 13 laps of the 16 lap race. It just so happens the Supersport race, run on the same day, also in the rain was a 13 lap race. Perhaps more noteworthy are the lap times of the podium finishers in that race.

Corey Alexander, the race winner bested the circuit at 2:10.594. Second place and more than 18 seconds behind, David Gaviria’s best time was 2:13.463. Third place Travis Oghe posted a 2:11.485. Behind fourth place Thomas Puerta and his best of 2:12.187, the remainder of the field was nearly not in contention.

We can’t really say if the wet conditions were having a greater impact on the Supersport race than the Daytona Sportbike race so the above numbers may be a little squishy. In fact, we would have to go back to the first qualifying sessions for both series to see lap times in dry conditions on the same weekend.

Paddy’s first qualifying session netted him a best lap time of 2:01.252, which was more than a second faster than his practice times in the mid 2:02s. This time would have placed him 5th on the grid in the Supersport race. There’s no telling where he would have finished. However, as noted in an earlier article, running with the leaders is a distinctly different race than the mini battles occurring behind for mid-pack positions.

We’ve done similar analysis and found consistency with the Infineon results as well. There Paddy would have been competing with the same four aforementioned racers as well as Benny Solis who soundly won both Supersport races.

Speaking of Benny Solis…Paddy is eagerly looking forward to racing with him once again. It will be interesting to see how that contest will play out, considering past WERA West races have always seen Paddy finish ahead of Benny.

Finally, this may be a reach but we’ve also looked at Paddy’s times at Laguna Seca last year. On a severely hampered Ducati 848 in the Daytona Sportbike race, he finished 20th and posted times in the high 1:32s. Not stellar, but these times would have seen him finish top ten in the Supersport race there last year.

Meanwhile, the Kawasaki ZX-6R platform is Supersport legal and ready for the show at Laguna Seca, Monterey. If I had to handicap the Supersport race this weekend, I wouldn’t be betting against Paddy McCord – the new kid in town.

The following article is the first in a series of reports about Peak Performance Racing’s journey towards competing in the AMA Daytona SportBike series with pilot Patrick ‘Paddy’ McCord of California. The article, written by Peak Performance Motorcycles’ owner Danny DiNardo, chronicles what it takes to get started in AMA Pro Racing competition. When Ultimate Motorcycling heard about the project, we immediately got involved.

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